The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  It occurred to me that, in all our concern about food and lodging we had neglected to give any thought to King Henry’s pastimes. We were at work adding stabling for his horses, but what if he brought hawks with him when he came, and caged ferrets? How many hounds would he have with him? Then there were his entertainments. He liked surprises, impromptu picnics, revels and pageants. Would he expect us to put on such entertainments for him? I didn’t see how it would be possible.

  One morning when I was lying down, feeling very ill, Mrs. Molsey came in, bustling and angry, with two of the kitchenmaids trailing behind her looking shamefaced.

  “These girls will be the death of me, mistress! I’m trying to train them, but they will wander off and neglect their duties. What do you think happened to the load of trussed turkeys that just came from Netherhampton? The dogs came and carried them away, every last one, while the girls weren’t looking!”

  I almost burst into tears, but stopped myself. I had been taught never to show emotion in front of the servants—except anger, of course, when they failed to perform as they should. I sent the cook and the kitchenmaids out of the room with an impatient wave of my hand.

  “Buy more turkeys!” I said. “And pen up the dogs!”

  As soon as the women had gone, I gave way to my real feelings and sobbed. I was ill, I felt overwhelmed, I was worried about my husband and I had no one to confide in. I felt wretched—and I did not realize, at the time, what I know now: that a woman who is carrying a child can be overly emotional.

  The king would be on our doorstep in only a few weeks and yet, try as we might to make everything ready for him, we were being blocked on every hand. A disease broke out among our milk cows and half of them died. We could not afford to replace them. Mistress Boleyn would have to forego her milk baths. Dogs were stealing our provisions. Poachers were at work in our park, shooting our deer—the very deer the king was coming to hunt. And most recently, we had quarreled with Ned’s father.

  Sir Thomas Burgh, my father-in-law, had taken no part in all the activity leading up to the king’s visit. After all, King Henry was going to be our guest, and ours alone; though he now owned all the farms surrounding our estate, Sir Thomas had his own country house three days’ ride from Gainesborough. He was not a part of our everyday lives.

  Ned wrote to his father asking to borrow some silver plate and goblets and some lengths of fine damask for the king’s table. He received a curt reply. “Alas, all our plate and goblets are in use, and our linens as well, for we are entertaining our kinsman Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham.”

  Ned became angry when his father’s letter arrived. “It’s a lie,” he said, curling his lips in disgust. “I happen to know that Tunstall is in Rome, on a mission for King Henry. My father is just jealous, and unwilling to help us.”

  Ned could have left the matter as it stood, but he was too forthright. He wrote to his father and told him, in a respectful but firm tone, that he knew the story about the bishop was a lie and that he would have liked to count on his father’s help. I urged Ned not to send the letter but he said it would be dishonest not to, and dispatched a swift rider to carry it to Sir Thomas’s estate.

  When the reply came back to Ned it was harsh and brusque. No good son dares call his father a liar, Sir Thomas wrote. No dutiful son questions his father’s decisions about what to do with his silver plate and goblets or anything else. There was more—about my winning over the king’s favor by underhanded means and achieving my own ends at the expense of the Burgh family. Ned was an ungrateful son, but I was the true villainess, according to Sir Thomas, I was the viper being nourished at the family’s bosom. I was to blame for everything.

  The venomed words and ill feeling could hardly have come at a worse time. Sir Thomas did not know it, nor did Ned, but I was carrying the next heir to Gainesborough. Ned was Sir Thomas’s only child. My son would be his first grandchild. It was a season for family unity, not divisiveness.

  But we hardly had time to ponder any of this, let alone try to set things straight, for a great storm swept down out of the north and for two days Gainesborough was all but drowned in drenching rain.

  Hail and the ceaseless heavy downpour destroyed all our crops and we could not get all the animals to shelter. Streams rose and overflowed their banks, flooding the low-lying outbuildings. Our barns and storage sheds were knee-deep in muddy water. Animal fodder was ruined. We still had what food was stored in the cellars and larders of the main house, for it was built on a hill and the storm waters did not rise above its outer walls. But much else was lost, as day after day the black clouds hung low above us and high winds and lashing rain drove down in ceaseless fury.

  Ned, refusing to be deterred in his determination to prepare Gainesborough Hall to receive the king, insisted upon continuing the work of renovating the east wing for Mistress Boleyn and her ladies. Though the lumber was damp and the plaster sodden he urged the laborers on to complete the spacious rooms with their high ceilings and tall windows. Only the decorative stonework for the wide hearths remained to be set in place.

  “The stones are still at Netherhampton,” Ned told me as he threw his thick felt cloak over his shoulders. “The masons haven’t delivered them. I must go and fetch them.”

  “But how? The roads will be nothing but mud, after all this rain. You’ll drown.”

  “Not if I’m careful.”

  There was no deterring him. I recognized the look of fierce determination in his eyes, the set of his jaw. I was frightened for him, but I knew it was no use trying to hold him back. I kissed him and saw him off, then watched from our bedchamber window as he rode down the hill and along the muddy road toward Netherhampton, his horse’s hooves splashing through deep puddles as he went.

  He left in the morning, a dull gray morning dark with the promise of more rain. When he had not returned by early evening I made my way to the stables and ordered one of the grooms to saddle me a horse. The hard rain had stopped, only a sullen drizzle remained. But my clogs sank into the marshy ground in the stable yard, and water dripped from the eaves in a steady trickle.

  “Pardon milady, but you cannot mean to ride out on a night like this.” It was our steward Daniel, a look of concern on his round face.

  “My husband has not come back from Netherhampton. He should have been home hours ago. I must look for him.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.” He saddled his own mount and together we started out along the Netherhampton road, Daniel holding a lantern as our horses picked their way carefully past deep ruts and mudholes. We went slowly. Often we stumbled, or rather the horses did, and we held on tightly so as to avoid being thrown off into the quagmire.

  After half an hour the sky cleared and the moon rose, a bright moon nearly at the full. It shone down on the wet road, turning it into a pathway of silver.

  “No doubt the master stopped the night in the village,” Daniel said. “He’ll start out for home in the morning.”

  “I wish that were true. But I know he was in a great hurry to get back with more stones for the new hearths.”

  Daniel was silent as we went on, the twilight deepening around us. There was no one else on the road, and the only sound we heard was the plodding and plashing of our horses’ hooves. After a time I began to think Daniel might be right after all.

  We were on a long straight stretch of road when we heard hoof beats and the clanking and rattling of a cart, its frame and wheels straining as if under a heavy load. We stopped to listen. The hoof beats grew louder, approaching rapidly. Then, in the distance, we saw a cart pulled by two straining horses, the driver lashing at them with a whip. It was coming directly toward us, far too quickly for safety given the dangerous condition of the narrow road.

  I knew at once that it was Ned—and I knew, in the same instant, that something terrible was about to happen. The cart was lurching crazily from side to side, and the horses whinnied with fear when they caught sight of us, standing still in their path.


  “Quick, get off the road!” Daniel called out to me and we both kicked our mounts and tried to turn them toward the rock-strewn shoulder. But we were not fast enough. Our horses moved, but not before the cart, having swerved to avoid us, sank into a deep rut, broke a wheel and axle and turned over, crushing the driver under its full weight.

  The horses were screaming, the cart wheels spinning in the empty air. I heard a dreadful cry and realized that it came from my own throat.

  “Ned! Ned!” I got down off my horse, swearing at her when she would not stand still, and ran to the cart.

  All I could see was wreckage. From beneath a mound of whitish stones an arm and hand protruded. Ned’s arm and hand. I knelt and grasped the warm hand—and felt a faint pressure against my own fingers. He was alive.

  Daniel had cut the terrified cart horses loose from their harness and they were struggling to their feet.

  “Daniel! Help me! He’s alive!”

  With a strength far beyond any strength I knew I possessed I began, with the steward’s aid, to free Ned from the weight under which he lay. We pushed away the broken axle and managed, grunting and straining, to throw aside the splintered wreckage of the cart which had shattered into many pieces. There remained the heap of stones. Fortunately they were not immense slabs but brick-sized chunks of rock, which we lifted and tossed onto the road as rapidly as we could. We could hear Ned coughing and struggling for air as gradually his arm and shoulder were exposed to the moonlight, then his sunken chest and finally his dear bleeding face, which was covered with a fine white dust.

  “There now, master, we’ll have you free in no time,” Daniel was saying. “We’ll get you home and call Dr. Swetnam over to see to you, and he’ll soon have you well again!”

  My own face was wet with tears. I bent to kiss Ned again and again, all the while lifting stone after stone and casting them aside. All I could think of as I worked was, let him live, let him live.

  I do not know how long Daniel and I worked side by side, or how we managed to lift the groaning Ned, who was by this time unconscious, onto Daniel’s horse and tie him there for the journey back to Gainesborough. The moon had nearly set when we finally reached the stable yard, Daniel shouting for the grooms and servants from the house running with lanterns to help us. I must have fainted, for I have no memory of being lifted down off my horse and carried into the house. All I know is that my sleep that night was troubled, broken by dreams of screaming horses and a huge and terrifying mound of stones falling on me and a shining silver path of road, lit by bright moonlight, that led downward and downward into a dark abyss.

  6

  NED WAS ALIVE—BUT ONLY JUST. HE LAY IN OUR BIG CANOPIED BED, his swollen eyes closed, his face a mass of purple bruises and angry red cuts. As gently as I could, I washed him and spread an ointment over the worst of his wounds. I hardly left his side. I rested on a pallet bed next to the larger one in which Ned slept, and I had my meals brought up to the bedchamber so that there would be no need for me to be away from him for even an hour.

  Dr. Swetnam, a burly physician from York with deft hands and an empathetic manner, came to examine Ned daily. He did what he could, which was little enough.

  “The broken bones I can bind so that they will heal,” the doctor told me. “But what is broken deep inside of him I cannot reach. And without food—well, I think you know what the outcome must be.”

  Ned was unable to eat, the most he could do was to swallow a little of the wine Dr. Swetnam prepared for him, red wine into which he sprinkled a powder to make Ned sleep.

  The doctor patted my hand. “We must ease his pain as much as we can. Meanwhile you need looking after.”

  He treated my raw, sore hands, full of splinters and cuts from handling the timber and rough-edged stones on the night we found Ned. A heavy stone had fallen on my left foot and the pain made me limp when I walked.

  “You need food and rest. You must think of your child.”

  I looked up at Dr. Swetnam in alarm. No one knew about the child I was carrying. Not even Ned.

  “Yes, my dear. Your condition is evident to me, if to no one else. Before long you will not be able to keep your secret.”

  I was very tired, and longed for sleep, but I continued to watch Ned hour by hour, sitting on the bed, looking down at him while he slept, wiping his poor face with a cool cloth when he sweated with fever and tossed restlessly.

  Once, when I had dozed off, I was awakened by the sound of Ned’s voice. I was startled. He hadn’t spoken since the night his cart overturned.

  “My Cat,” he was saying, very softly, his voice hoarse. “My sweet Cat.” His eyes were open and he seemed to look at me, just for a moment. Then his eyes glazed over and began to close.

  “Ned, dear, don’t go to sleep yet. I have some good news to tell you.”

  His eyelids fluttered. I hoped he could hear me.

  “God has answered our prayers. Our child is living inside me. Our son.”

  “Our son.” He repeated the words, very faintly. I thought for an instant that he smiled. Then he slept, his breathing ragged.

  I wept, I couldn’t help weeping. I knew that Ned would never see the baby I would bear. I would have to tell our boy what his father had been like. I would have to try to take Ned’s place, to be both mother and father to my fatherless child.

  All that night I stayed awake, lying beside Ned in the candlelit room, watching over him. Though I knew he could not hear me I tried my best to tell him how much I loved him. At dawn, when there was nothing more to say, I told a servant to bring in Father Ambrose, a monk from the nearby abbey of St. Mary’s who had been waiting patiently to give Ned the last rites. The prayers were said and the ritual concluded. The pungent scent of incense filled the room. I took Ned’s limp body in my arms and held him, there on the bed, until the breath no longer came and went in his chest and Father Ambrose told me gently that Ned’s soul had flown.

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said as he made the sign of the cross over my poor dear husband. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” The familiar words brought me no comfort. I have no words to describe the pain I felt. I have known no other pain like it, then or since.

  I slept then, the deep sleep of exhaustion, and when I woke I did what was necessary to arrange for Ned’s funeral mass and burial in Gainesborough church. Father Ambrose and Daniel helped me. I had sent my brother Will a letter telling him what had happened. I hoped he would come to be with me and offer me support. But instead I got a letter in reply. Will was with our mother in Richmond, far to the south, and could not come to Gainesborough. Mother was ill and needed him.

  Will had done one thing for me, however. He had taken it upon himself to tell Cardinal Wolsey of Ned’s death in hopes that the royal visit to Gainesborough would be canceled or at least postponed. But the cardinal was adamant: nothing could alter the king’s plans.

  Exhausted as I was, grieving for my beloved husband and lonely and sad without him, I tried to rouse myself to return to the great task that had taken Ned’s life: the task of making Gainesborough Hall ready to receive King Henry and his traveling court.

  I tried—but my strength was not equal to the task. I had no appetite. I felt ill. I brooded about my fatherless child. And I cried, a dozen times a day, two dozen. I could not stop the tears. They seemed to flow from some deep well of inconsolable sorrow.

  Even now, in the terrible isolation of my bereavement, I did not tell anyone that I was pregnant. It was easy enough to hide my condition. Dr. Swetnam had guessed the truth, but no one else suspected it. My belly did not yet bulge very much and my gowns and the shapeless aprons I wore over them concealed all. I hoarded my secret, as a miser hoards a treasure. The baby was all I had. All I had that was mine alone. All I had left of Ned.

  The days were dwindling until the king was due to arrive. One afternoon I heard a commotion in the courtyard and Daniel’s voice came drifting up to me, through my window, shouting to the g
rooms. I threw on a shawl over my plain gown and made my way downstairs.

  Through the open doorway came my father-in-law Sir Thomas Burgh, in a doublet of fine dark blue brocade and silken hose, a gleaming gold-embossed sword hanging from his belt. Behind him came my uncle William, tall and imposing, a frown of displeasure on his broad manly features. Behind them came half a dozen men I did not recognize. They wore the uniform of the Calais Spears.

  Neither Lord Thomas nor my uncle acknowledged me, but pushing past me, strode into the salon and began giving orders to the servants.

  “Remove the wench,” Sir Thomas said to two of the men he had brought with him when I protested.

  “I am no wench. I am the lady of this manor.”

  No one leaped to my defense. I was taken by my arms and led roughly to my bedchamber and locked in.

  I realized, in that moment, that it had been Ned who ruled Gainesborough Hall and not me, and that I had no real authority there—at least not while Sir Thomas was present and in command. Nearly all the servants on our staff had been Sir Thomas’s servants before Ned became master; some had served Ned’s grandfather Lord John Burgh before Ned was born. Their obedience belonged more naturally to Sir Thomas than to me. Besides, Sir Thomas’s soldiers frightened the Gainesborough servants into obedience.

  Hours later I heard a key turn in the lock and my father-in-law came in. I stood and confronted him.

  “How dare you invade my house and make me a prisoner!”

  He made a dismissive gesture with one hand.

  “I am here at the command of Cardinal Wolsey, and by his authority. The house must be made ready for his majesty. You and my son were inadequate.”

  “Your late son.”